


Miracle Goodnights

by Silberias



Category: Naruto
Genre: Drabble Collection, F/M, Gen, One Shot Collection, Some Fluff, Some angst, complicated ninja life and ethics, old 50 drabble challenge, old drabbles, some dark shinobi have garbage lives stuff, some longer ficlets, some short shorts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-26
Updated: 2018-10-26
Packaged: 2019-08-07 18:40:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 5
Words: 17,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16413740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silberias/pseuds/Silberias
Summary: These will all be of varying lengths, varying "universes," and not part of a larger, coherent story at all.





	1. Chapter 1

**Hero**

He just hung back, watching his girlfriend Sakura and semi-adopted little brother Naruto beat their opponents into the ground—literally—one of those guys had his temporal lobe squished out into the grass. Kakashi smiled widely beneath his mask when Sakura turned towards him, flushed and happy from victory.

"So they're done for."

"Which makes you two?"

"Big damn heroes, Sir."

* * *

**Sacred**

The time he spent at the cenotaph was sacred to him, Sakura knew that well enough. The time he would spend with her, however, was of an entirely more important level. It was because of this that he skipped his normal morning appointment with the memorial stone one day, choosing to spend those hours with her at the first of many pre-natal check-ups.

* * *

**Run**

Kakashi had started to go running with Sakura when Naruto left once again—this time to gather information on his mother's heritage, searching the world for others who traced their lines back to Whirlpool. His absence was taken hard by Sakura and Kakashi elected to show her that she was not alone by training with her when he could. Mostly they just ran for several hours every morning, sparring every few days.

Well, Kakashi held back to wait for Sakura early on until she decided he was holding back because she was a girl. To be sure, Kakashi didn't hold back from the all-out sprint for his life when she felt her delicate pride being insulted in such a manner.

* * *

**Memory**

Brain injuries were touchy, and it was amazing that Naruto took _time_ to heal from his. Sakura liked to reminisce about how her blonde friend greeted their former Sensei and herself after waking from a few days' coma. He'd looked between Sakura checking his vitals at his temple, to Kakashi leaning with his elbows on the bed, and very simply concluded they were his parents.

The amnesia had only lasted a few days, but much hilarity had ensued. Pictures were taken, at Kakashi's insistence, and their "son" was taken around the village on excursions to entertain him. He'd come-to a second time when Sakura had been trying to get him to wear a froggy hat that she was insisting he wore every day without complaint.

The thing is, Kakashi and Sakura had decided they liked playing house together and even though Naruto had recovered they never quite ended the relationship he'd assumed of them when he'd been ill.

* * *

**Silk**

Sakura had said the intense grip their son displayed was a natural reflex that infants possessed, all the while grinning madly as Kazuhiko's fist latched at Kakashi's mask and pulled it halfway down his face, reeling his father in by the cloth covering. His hair, a lighter pink than Sakura's, stuck up from his head like Kakashi's.

Kakashi wondered if the boy would take after him as he grew older—with thick, sturdy hair—or Sakura's still downy-soft hair. He held his son carefully, supporting his head as he nuzzled his nose against the infant's creamy cheek before looking into the swiftly-darkening blue eyes which stared up at him, trying to focus past his fascination.

His wife—he'd made an honest woman of her four days after she'd told him he was going to be a father—stood gingerly from the bed, wrapping their sheet around herself as she made her way across the room to him and his son. Looking her up and down for a moment, Kakashi was glad for the changes her body had gone through in the months she'd been pregnant—her hair was full and flowing, and as vividly pink as he could ever remember it. There were curves on her that no other kunoichi would be proud of, but Sakura fit even better against him with them—she was soft, silky, like their infant son.

And, as he stood in their small apartment holding his son with his wife leaning against him, Kakashi was smart enough to tamp down the urge to mention how wonderful it felt to be the one providing for the three of them. He liked his nose where it was, thank you.

* * *

**Midnight**

Sakura's watch was set to beep minutely at the top of each hour—otherwise she often lost track of time in her research, training, or healing. The tiny sound she'd trained herself to hear woke her up—the watch was somewhere in her discarded clothing, it seemed. One, two, three, four—what time is it anyway, she thought briefly—five, six, seven, eight, nine—really, it was _very_ dark outside, definitely not morning—ten, eleven, twelve, silence. Midnight then.

Kakashi had woken up at the first little chime as well, he wasn't one to sleep through bumps in the night. He'd lived this long, he knew better than that—he was now a healthy thirty three as of just moments ago.

"Happy Birthday, Kakashi, your present is at my house—I'll give it to you in the morning," Sakura mumbled, snuggling close to him as he wrapped his arms around her better. She was sound asleep when he gingerly disentangled himself from her to reach around under the bed, grabbing at the present he'd gotten for himself several days earlier. This one, he was sure, he'd like for much longer than he'd enjoy the custom-weighted kunai she'd gotten him. Not that he'd peeked or anything.

He'd expected the cold of the ring to wake her, but she was exhausted it seemed—she'd worked double-shifts this entire week just to ensure she was "forced" to take a day off tomorrow, for his birthday. With a smile, Kakashi put his arms around her once again—arranging her left arm so that he could see her hand, where his ring gleamed from its place on her finger.

* * *

**Hurricane**

Kakashi caused hurricanes with certain combinations of jutsu sometimes, small ones to be sure but to be caught up in the middle of such maelstroms was both terrifying and incredible.

Sakura caused earthquakes with certain combinations of emotions sometimes, small ones to be sure, but with the earth tearing itself apart beneath one's feet, the feeling was both terrifying and incredible.

So it was a miracle that nothing short of a natural disaster happened on their wedding night—but then again, they _did_ have that honeymoon-mission in that one rather unfortunate little town a few days away from Konoha. You know—the one where the local crime lord was found shredded and mashed to a pulp, surrounded by his lackeys who had suffered generally similar fates.

* * *

**Talent**

Sakura had broken her leg and was ineligible for missions until it healed—and so Tsunade had her assigned to read top-level mission reports. It was an awful, awful job. There were the ones which were too sparse in detail written by those who were her own age, the more detailed ones coming from older, more experienced shinobi. Which would have been totally awesome up until Sakura got to a report from Kakashi about a solo mission he'd returned from a few days ago. It wasn't just his particular report, but his was definitely the straw that broke her.

Instead of flying into a rage at Tsunade about the poor handwriting of the older shinobi, Sakura called in Kakashi to meet her in the miserable little office she'd been stuffed for her working-convalescence. It wasn't to accuse him, it wasn't to do anything but find out why no one his age seemed to be able to write a legible sentence.

"You called, Sakura-chan?"

"Yes," she grumped, in the midst of trying to decipher Yamanaka Inoichi's intelligence report, not bothering to look up at him.

"And?"

"Your generation has an amazing lack of talent concerning writing—and in some cases spelling it seems like!" Kakashi's hands entered her field of vision, taking the report from her. She followed the paper up, looking at his face as he read it. Her jaw went slack as he read it off perfectly, as though he'd memorized it. One serious dark eye glanced from the page to her face before softening as he set the sheet down on the desk and cupping a hand at her cheek.

"Sakura, there was a war on when I was a boy, when all of us were children. They taught you to read and write when you were five—they taught us when we turned twelve or thirteen, around when they'd promote us from Chuunin to Jounin. I taught myself when I was nine, but it wasn't like I had help or anything from my sensei." Her eyes filled with tears at the thought that children who couldn't read or write were sent into battle—only taught when they'd proved themselves to be useful. Kakashi shook his head slightly and bent down to squat easily between the wall and her desk, taking her one of her hands with his free one.

"Your writing is so very straight and beautiful, Sakura. Reading your mission reports makes old men like me smile. In those lines we can see what was achieved by having us sacrifice so much, so young." Then the tears did fall, silently and hot, down her face—some soaked into his glove where he still held her face. She let him hold her, so delicately with a hand at her cheek and another at her hands, until she got herself under better control.

"You're not all that old, Kakashi-sensei," she managed to say without too much wobbling in her voice. His eye slid shut with his smile at that.

"Well, I suppose I'm not that old compared to old Inoichi-san here—see? His writing's even worse than mine."

* * *

**Lies**

The lie they lived after Konoha's destruction was a necessary one. The survivors of Leaf were few and far between, and not always welcoming to former comrades. Kakashi and Sakura had to make do, trying to hide while leaving a trail for Naruto to find them by if he was still alive. They posed as lovers, starcrossed by idiot civilian social taboos against teachers becoming involved with their students—specifically civilian nonsense because shinobi stopped caring after puberty. The construction was just scandalous enough that it left indelible rumors in the towns they visited, while maintaining a certain level of secrecy.

* * *

**Overwhelmed**

Sakura had never felt more out of her element than she did the first morning she woke up at Kakashi's apartment. She was twenty, and the night before hadn't been anything new save for her partner. But as she opened her eyes, seeing a dusting of silver chest hair and a torso crisscrossed with a lifetime's worth of battle wounds, she felt _twenty_. The word just didn't seem to fit with thirty four, much less something seemingly more manageable like thirty. The sudden realization that this might not work out how she had wanted it to the night before hit her, and Sakura squeezed her eyes shut and curled into Kakashi's body to hide from it.

He was awake, she knew, but just laying calmly on his back with an arm around her. At her snuggle his thumb swept across her upper arm, fingers trailing. It was reminiscent of his gestures towards her on dates, a barely there touch, completely deliberate, and all for her. This was the feeling he'd spoken of fleetingly a few weeks ago, this feeling that perhaps they didn't fit together as well as she had believed. Sakura clamped down on that feeling, mentally insisting that she would overcome any barrier between them. It settled in her belly like lead.


	2. Chapter 2

**Body**

The only thing about Kakashi's life that was disorganized was his body. Patched together time and time again for nearly thirty years, his limbs and torso were a crisscross of old stitching lines, scars, and healed over burns. He wasn't as badly disfigured as Morino Ibiki, but there was a reason he rarely was seen without either his shirt or his mask.

Sakura was his trusted medic because she understood how embarrassed he was by the evidence of his numerous failures. She too never showed off her torso because of a few terrifyingly close calls, and the scars they'd left. Her red vest always came off though, leaving just her bindings, when she forced him to take off his own shirt—because seeing her scars comforted him in a sick way. He wasn't the only fuck up.

The rest of each of their lives were meticulously organized and perfect, and they only allowed each other to see the mess their professions had left their bodies—and by extension their minds—in.

* * *

**Box**

He'd forgone the box, which was five centimeters wide by five centimeters long by three centimeters tall, and the damn thing wouldn't fit in either his pocket, his vest, or even up a sleeve. So he kept it stowed in his glove, nestled between his palm and the soft leather inside of the thing. It would be warm and probably just a little damp from his nervous twitching, but at this point he was kind of fine with that and he was sure Sakura would be too pleased to care.

It was just a necklace after-all.

* * *

**Breath**

Her daughter, usually a light sleeper, was deeply asleep when Sakura came home from her week long mission. Kakashi was laid out, also unconscious, on the tatami, the infant securely laid out on his chest. Eri was barely three months old, and Sakura had been pulled very reluctantly back into active missions—Kakashi babysat for her when he could (which was often as he was getting drafted by Nara Shikaku as the man's replacement in preparation for Naruto's induction as Hokage. Poor Kakashi was hardly allowed to leave the village). Her boyfriend was around her apartment a lot, it was easiest for little Eri when he was her babysitter.

He wasn't her father, no matter how much Sakura or Kakashi wished he were sometimes. Eri's father was Uchiha Itachi. He had allowed himself to be captured by Konoha forces, explaining that it was his duty as a Leaf to return the Sharingan to the village—It had come down to Ino or Sakura as the possible shinobi mothers, and in the end Ino had clan obligations which prevented her from fulfilling the mission. Sakura had had no such obligations, at least in the eyes of the committee handling Itachi's case.

The Uchiha had "died unexpectedly" when Sakura was three months pregnant, and that was when Kakashi had stepped into the sudden void she'd experienced. Itachi was to have been kept alive in order to teach the use of the Sharingan to his children—there were to be eight in all, seven with civilian mothers and then little Eri, to be made clan head when she came of age because she was both the eldest and her mother was a shinobi. But Itachi had died—either of a hidden illness or he had been eliminated, and Sakura had suddenly faced single parenthood of a child with a terrifying ability.

Kakashi was much older than her and she'd never really known him even a year ago, but he cared deeply for her and Eri and that was enough. Sakura knew she was being selfish, that there were seven other women who also had children with eyes that could turn terrifying later on, but just being able to go out on missions once again, getting out of the housewife mold the village had tried to cram her into, that was more than anything she'd ever dreamed of since she'd been asked to complete this mission.

The silver haired Jounin, still quite mysterious most days, might not have been the one to give the breath of life to Eri, but he had certainly been the one to give it to Sakura during the final months of her pregnancy as well as these last few months since she'd brought her daughter into the world. And for that, Sakura could breathe a sigh of relief and lay herself down next to Kakashi on the tatami.

* * *

 

**Temptation**

Eight year old Kasumi's parents were fighting—they didn't often fight, but when they did Kasumi gently and quietly packed her school work and went upstairs to continue studying. Tonight they were yelling, and the topic of the fight was about her. It somehow revolved around whether or not she was to be allowed to graduate when she passed the graduation exam or when she was 'old enough.'

Her mother kept revisiting the idea of 'old enough,' reiterating constantly that she herself had been qualified to take the exam at the age of nine but had deferred until she was 'old enough.' Kasumi's father had passed the graduation exam when he had been a child, no more than five, it was him who thought that Kasumi ought to be allowed to graduate when she was ready rather than be kept in the stuffy Academy for years on end.

Most of this was just what she overheard, trying to tune them out by checking over her homework once again. She didn't understand what her mother's problem was—she liked the Academy, she knew what kind of missions were assigned to Genin these days, and most of all Kasumi had her parents there to help train her once she left the Academy. Sometimes she just wanted her mother and father to agree on that much, they could fight about everything else if they would just agree when it came to Kasumi—she was tempted often to just _ask_ that of them.

* * *

**Ring**

Sakura's family crest appeared everywhere in her wardrobe—even a little black dress had a tiny patch of red fabric with a white ring sewn into the front. What surprised Kakashi the most, however, was that that white ring could be found on her garter as he took it slowly down her leg at their wedding.

* * *

**World**

In Konoha they kept track of their shinobi by way of ninja registration numbers. To avoid the use of dog-tags or forcing shinobi to keep papers on their person to prove who they were their registration number was tattooed with special sealing ink onto their bodies in two places.

The first was on their left or right shoulder-blade depending on their gender, right for men left for women. The second was on the opposite-sided foot, on the arch, and was traditionally done after one's Chuunin exam—proof that one was a serious shinobi.

Kakashi knows that there are two thousand eight hundred and eighty one shinobi registration numbers between himself and Sakura. Her tattoos are still fairly vivid against her skin, while he has had to have his own retouched twice in the ensuing years since he got them. He hopes to live long enough to create a world where there are far fewer numbers between a man his age and a woman Sakura's—because a world where nearly three thousand children are trained for battle in fifteen years isn't one he wants to raise his child in.

* * *

**Talk**

Daichi and Fumio sat next to one another in the missions room, they had been friends since they were children. Each man had lived through many attacks on the village, each of them were proud Chuunin. They knew there were famous people in Konoha, because even famous people had to get in the missions lines to get assigned regular missions. Daichi handed out missions, while Fumio accepted reports written for completed missions, so they saw a lot of the same people between them.

They never gave missions to Uzumaki Naruto, because Naruto only accepted missions from the Hokage or another Chuunin named Umino Iruka. The boy had been on some sort of famous team—but really no one cared about who was on that team outside of…well…that team. Naruto was the hero of Konoha, not the rest of his Genin team. Or what was left of it, if rumors served.

Hatake Kakashi came through their line one day and Daichi leaned over later and told his companion that _that_ man was the Copy Nin—knew over a thousand jutsu, and that was a _conservative_ estimate. All they'd had for him that day was a CB-rank, but he had nodded pleasantly and taken the mission willingly. He wasn't above petty mid-ranking missions it seemed, and that made each of them a little prouder to be Chuunin of Konoha somehow.

When he returned his report on the mission a week later—three days later than his return to the village—he smiled all through Fumio's lecture on returning mission reports in a _timely_ manner. His eye had been droopy with something other than mission-exhaustion, and Daichi had noticed it. It wasn't sadness, it was some sort of contentment. Did he like getting lectured?

"Hey Fumio," he said in a low voice later as they filed paperwork during a lull of people in the room.

"Yeah?"

"Did you see that look Hatake was giving you earlier?"

"The 'I-don't-care-what-you-lecture-me-about-because-I-got-laid- as-a-welcome-home-present-by-my-three-months-pregnant-wife' look? Yeah, I noticed it." Fumio looked like he was trying to forget about it too.

"He's _married_?" The fact that the wife in question was pregnant went almost over Daichi's head entirely. Fumio nodded.

"Yeah, to some scary high-ranking medic nin too," he said, "and I heard she's going to make him retire when the kid is born, while she's gonna run the hospital for Tsunade-sama."

" _Sakura-san_ is Hatake's wife?" Daichi had been healed by her just a few months ago, and while he hadn't shamelessly ogled her he _had_ left his address for her. It was amazing he was still alive, after hitting on the Copy Nin's wife. Fumio shot him a funny look at the weird gurgle Daichi made as he processed just how close he'd come to death.

"Well yeah. They keep it down, maybe they don't want to intimidate people more than they already do or something. But that's why his mission reports come in later than they used to, it's because he spends a day or so with her before he goes back to being serious. You ever been on a mission with him?"

"No…have you?"

"Yes, it's terrifying. _He's_ terrifying. He used to stay up all night after missions writing the report, and he'd hand it in first thing the next morning. He's really cooled it since he got married—you should be glad for that."

"Yeah. Wow…"

* * *

**Fever**

Sakura was pregnant with Aki when Kakashi caught the flu. Tsunade herself was in charge of his recovery—at least, that's what it seemed like in his feverish state—because of some nonsense that Sakura wasn't allowed to use her chakra to look after his health. Kakashi swore he could see chakra sometimes because of the fever—Tsunade's was a harsh blue-green, Sakura's was a cheery and warm color, while his unborn child's chakra was a soft white like his own.

He, even years later, could vaguely recall begging Sakura to name their baby after that bright white chakra. She had been sitting on the edge of the bed, smoothing his hair off his forehead with her left hand. Her other hand held his against her stomach, letting him feel the baby kicking. He had smiled winningly up at her and asked her quite clearly—although Sakura claimed that his smile had been rather lackadaisical and that his question had been _more_ than disjointed.

* * *

**Wings**

They'd been married for fifty years when Kakashi passed away. He was eighty years old, and had been one of the longest serving members of the Konoha shinobi force in history—having been forced to retire at the age of sixty eight, making him just a hair younger than Sandaime-sama had been when he'd passed away. He had never been Hokage, he had never been the supreme captain of the ANBU, he had never been a foreign diplomat, but still hundreds of people had sent her letters of condolence or had appeared at his funeral. Today was the first day that she could have a few moments alone with her deceased husband and her memories.

Sakura was sixty-six, and sometimes felt like she could barely remember a life without him. He had been there for her for more than fifty years, and one day he was gone. Sitting in the cemetery, counting out fifty of his favorite flowers—peony—she wondered if somehow things would have been different. She had been fifteen when he'd slept with her, and sixteen when he had married her. He had made so many of her decisions for her, somehow, that she wondered how she was supposed to be her own person now.

It was far too late, really. She thought on Tsunade's face when Sakura had told her she was going to give up all foreign missions, choosing to focus on working in the hospital. She was just shy of her sixteenth birthday, and was preparing to move in with Kakashi. He wanted children, and wanted her to be safe, for them to have a mother. It had never occurred to her then that he was manipulating her simply because she lacked experience and clarity of her goals.

Those had been the words Tsunade had said to her softly even as she signed over the field-termination papers. That Sakura was giving up more than she realized, just because she lacked experience and clarity of her goals. Tsunade's words had quickly been forgotten. Raising a family had quickly become her new priority, as Kakashi gave her ten children to look after before her thirtieth birthday and it was only because an eleventh would have killed her did they stop.

Looking at the flowers piled on his headstone, Sakura moved to trace his name with her fingertips. He had been a good man, an excellent husband and a loving father. Everything she had ever wanted, it seemed sometimes. She _knew_ it was messed up. She _knew_ that he had taken advantage of her when she was fifteen and terrified of growing up—they'd had a terrible fight about it twenty years ago now, but what was the point, he'd said, of fighting about something which was so far in the past? He had stepped into the role of teacher once more and taught her that it wasn't scary. They had never spoken of why he had done it, or allowed it to continue, or even why he had married her. The answer was, chillingly, probably because he could—he had woken up one day and realized he was nearly thirty and wanted a family, and Sakura had been there, right there, so easily directed. Perhaps the first time, when she had kissed him, had been an accident. But the rest?

She thought now, her fingers cool from touching the stone, that he had felt responsible, guilty. The emotion had grown into love soon enough, or at least obsession. Sakura herself had needed no such push, easily giving her heart to him when he asked for it. She trusted him. She had trusted him as she changed from child to womanchild, it was only logical to trust him to bring her from young to mature woman.

He had made her free to fly. So what if the wings he gave her were attached inexorably to him? That only meant that he had grounded her so she never flew too high.

* * *

**Silence**

Sakura had wormed her way into his life. That was all she could properly term it, as Kakashi had seemed to passively resist her at every turn. Her biggest obstacle so far had been getting him to cuddle with her on the couch, and before that it had been getting him to lace his fingers between hers properly. He had never really dated anyone with the amount of patience she had, he admitted, for a long time. The admission was enough for her efforts to seem worthwhile.

She found out the reason it had all been so hard one afternoon. They were sitting side by side, on his favorite branch in her favorite tree, leaning back against the trunk. He was holding one of her hands while he held his book with the other. Occasionally he laughed. Sakura was used to this, but today her curiosity got the better of her.

"Why do you laugh sometimes, when you're reading?"

Kakashi colored a little bit and coughed. He was embarrassed for reading smut—obviously.

"I, uh, well, sometimes the turn of phrase is just…Here, read it." He disentangled his hand from hers and handed her the book. Sakura couldn't be sure but it felt like he had purposefully distanced himself from her, just a little bit.

The page he had been reading was nothing but the worst smut put to paper—the prose was downright royal in its purple.

"The way he's written it, you mean, right?"

"No, the actual…I just think it's…I don't _do_ the things—I mean to say it's just…it would never occur to me to do that…" Kakashi abruptly stopped, exasperated in the search for what he really wanted to say. He closed his eye and took a few deep breaths, while Sakura felt that the orange book in her hands weighed more and more.

"I've been a ranked shinobi since I was six years old, and at a critical time in my development I followed every shinobi rule to the absolute letter…I don't touch people except to give praise or to murder them, and what little downtime I have in my life I choose to spend in meaningful company with the few people left to me. I also maintain a healthy, solitary relationship with my pillow. I don't _live_ that life described in these books in the least—I read them for the plot," _sure you do_ , Sakura thought, "I laugh at the parts I could never imagine doing with another person. Now," he took the book out of her hands, not seeming to notice how heavy it had gotten, "I have to go home and take care of my plant. I'll see you tomorrow for lunch." And with that he disappeared, leaving Sakura gaping after him.

 _Never imagine doing with another person?_ She stood up and channeled her chakra to her feet so she could walk down the tree trunk. She would have to ask Tsunade-shisou about it, the woman had to know what was wrong with Kakashi.

Kakashi meanwhile walked through the village wondering if he'd done enough to explain to her. She probably thought he had some disorder that she could cure. Because she was a medic, and she fixed things—it wouldn't matter to her that he didn't feel like he was all that broken. She'd file it under "Kakashi is lying about an injury," in her mind, especially when he had just vomited out all the reasons he himself had meditated on of just _why_ he was like this. They weren't even really _real_ reasons, they were just reasons that could logically explain something which was illogical.

How does a sane male war-hero with an attractive partner not want sex of some sort? Completely psychologically damaged, of course, must be added to his files as a medical flaw. Like his unnatural eye.

He didn't even know what a best-case scenario was with what had just happened, he thought as he let himself into his apartment. He damn well knew the worst-case, which was Sakura leaving him and what they had because he couldn't provide her with something she had been pushing for since day one. It didn't exactly make him feel less of a man, that he couldn't provide for her—she was a capable person, after all, and could _and had_ provided for herself in many ways for years—but it did settle oddly on him. He liked her around, he could see retiring someday and living out his days with her.

But, he thought as he slumped into his couch, unlike his friends, he didn't envision a family, or wild nights, or _anything_. He imagined long afternoons like the one he had just cut short, or maybe going to the orphanage and volunteering there. But…most shinobi chose either celibacy or made room for _families_ —if they were going to be bogged down with emotions and everything, they were going to "get" something out of it. But Kakashi didn't want that 'It' whatever _it_ was.

Sakura ambled around the tree for several minutes after Kakashi had left. He had been as embarrassed and twitchy as Shikamaru and Chouji had been in the months after finally admitting to themselves and everyone else that they were in a relationship despite Chouji's on-again-off-again relationship with Ino and Shikamaru's with that girl from Suna. But…that hadn't really been what Kakashi was trying to tell her.

After a bit of thinking, Sakura sped towards the medical library that had been nearly her home years ago. There was a book there, and it would know the answer which is what her first medical training had been about—knowing where to look something up, and she didn't want to burden Tsunade-shisou with all of her questions. It was probably already in his file, but it felt less invasive to read about it in a book. If she was correct, she had already probably ruined everything. She tried not to let it nag at her.

She had been right, she found when she finally found the damn thing and looked it up. Classic signs. Trust a genius prodigy to have an orientation which less than three percent of the population had. Sakura groaned and drooped down to the table. She tried not to cry. He must have been so uncomfortable, but he was so nice that he never said anything about it. They were still in the stage of things where she was beginning to think of bigger picture, grander terms like marriage and family but without any heft behind the thoughts.

It was just that she couldn't seem to pick men also interested in those things _with her_. But she had to apologize, it must have been just awful to spend time with her. No wonder he hadn't wanted to kiss her!

People had fights, he knew, and people got over them. So he made sure he was on time for their lunch-date—they had to work out their strange argument today, because she worked for the next several days and he was due to go on a mission two days from now. This was probably their last true day off together for a while.

Sakura showed up at his place at eleven thirty, like they'd planned. But she blushed when she saw him, barely able to make eye contact. His hand suddenly felt empty and he realized that she hadn't reached to take his hand—was she really that mad at him? Normally she sulked a little, but at least took his hand. It was weird, because she usually initiated it, but he took her hand and laced his fingers with hers. He liked these little things, though it had taken a long time to get used to them. Most people he had ever dated hadn't stuck around long enough to make him hold hands with them.

They walked to the small place they'd settled on, a little restaurant they both liked. Well, Sakura liked just about anything, but their pickled plums were to die for she claimed. Kakashi was happy with how the cook prepared his fish, and couldn't complain. He usually didn't, there wasn't much in his life that complaining would change. Normally when they walked, Sakura grabbed his forearm with her free hand and nearly curled around his arm. Other times she would walk just a hair closer to him so their shoulders brushed. But today he felt less like she was walking with him and more like he was tugging her along.

Sitting down across from her, he had to let go of her hand. Her cheeks colored again. After the waiter had brought them water and coffee for her while he had tea, he had to know. It was too weird, and he wanted to know what he had done to upset her—it was obviously him, he wasn't dumb.

"Sakura, what's wrong?" he stretched one of his hands across the table, uncertain if that was what he was supposed to do. Really, he wasn't good at this. Sakura's eyes fixed on his hand while her lips worked for a silent moment.

"I'm sorry," she said softly. Kakashi's shoulders tightened. She was breaking up with him—he couldn't help it, but those words were the ones that had preceded his last two break-ups, it was hard to believe that Sakura wasn't doing the same.

"I didn't know, I mean…I should have. I _know_ you, and I should've known. It must have been awful, and I'm sorry," she wouldn't look up at him, but she did reach her hand out towards his and just barely touched his skin. Kakashi reacted like lightning, grabbing her hand and wound their fingers together. Her hand was warm against his, and he liked it. It was nice, and probably what he liked most about seeing her—her hands were always strong and warm.

"Sakura…just what are we talking about?" her eyes flew up to look at his face for a moment before settling to the steam coming up from her coffee cup. Their waiter appeared once more, breaking both of their efforts to concentrate. Kakashi ordered fish, and she ordered the same automatically—she never ordered fish, but couldn't look at the menu properly because Kakashi wouldn't let go of her hand.

"I…I looked it up, because I felt like I knew and I wanted to be sure, and I'm sorry. I've been pushing you and pushing you and just ignoring why I needed to at all," she was definitely breaking up with him, and Kakashi wondered for a moment which of them was supposed to get up and leave in a huff in a few moments. He didn't _want_ to break up with her, but if that was what she wanted he would deal with it.

"I can't help that I'm heterosexual and—" _wait she thought he was gay?_ _What?_ "—you can't help that you're heteroromantic."

_What._

For the first time she made real, deliberate contact with him on her own, hesitantly laying her free hand on top of where he held hers tightly. Kakashi was _more_ than thrown.

"It's something I think we can work out, if you're willing to deal with me," she said with a little smile, looking up at his face.

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Cold**

Kakashi had nursed her back to health after the attack on her life by ROOT agents. She was the only healer in Konoha who was probably capable of reviving Tsunade, and so Danzou had ordered a hit on her—Kakashi had saved her life that night but only barely. He'd taken them to Kumogakure under the strictest secrecy, to tell the Raikage of the problems brewing in Konoha.

They'd been given quarters—a bedroom, bathroom, studio-style kitchen-living room, a typical shinobi residence—in the Raikage Tower. It was there that Kakashi worked the poisons out of her chakra system and rehabilitated atrophied muscles. She fell in love with him then, although he had gently told her that she was likely only misunderstanding gratitude after a near-death experience.

Although by the following summer he couldn't deny that he felt something for her as well. Sakura wasn't bothered that he _wouldn't_ say he loved her—she knew that he just didn't say things like that. They got married that fall, their wedding officiated by the Raikage and his personal staff—and with that they formally renounced their Konoha citizenship as well as their ranks as Konoha shinobi. They took on Kumo citizenship, and were each evaluated as being Jounin level shinobi within the Kumo rosters.

They hadn't wanted to, but there was a mass exodus from Konoha of good shinobi and their families as Danzou and ROOT tried to take over the village. Tsunade had been smuggled out eight months before by Shizune and Yamato. She had established a small village just inside Kumo territory, and was working with Naruto as well as the Raikage to build that village into a worthy shinobi village.

It was at escapees from Konoha's urging that the other four nations started a war against Danzou's regime. But Kakashi had decided that the Konoha he loved had stopped existing for a long time, and Sakura was inclined to agree with him.

The winters were cold in Kumo and the fierce winds stung her cheeks, but she made up for that by wearing a mask when she went out in public. They moved out of the Raikage Tower and lived with distant relatives of Kakashi's—they were his father's great-aunts and uncles, and they were thrilled to finally meet Sakumo-kun's son. At the first few family dinners they'd had, Sakura had realized that Kakashi's Kumo blood showed quite strongly. He, who had been one of the lightest haired people in Konoha, had nearly _sooty_ hair compared to these people. The light blues, reds, yellows, and greens present in Kumo made Sakura herself feel normal as well. All of Kumo seemed to agree with her far better than Konoha—or at least that's what she told herself.

"So, Sakura-san, how did you and Kakashi meet?"

She glanced over at him, asking what she should say. Kakashi cleared his throat a little and politely answered for her.

"I was her Genin-sensei a few years ago. But we really saw each other for the first time when we came to Kumo."

There was a long silence at the table and Sakura wanted to drag her hand down her face—Some countries, she knew, fiercely disapproved of mentors becoming romantic with those they worked with. Some of the old men frowned at Kakashi while the women looked at Sakura herself with pity in their eyes. Finally a woman a little older than Kakashi spoke up.

"How rude to her family not to suggest an engagement at the time! Unless you are attached to another, there is no reason to spend that much time around a woman without at least acknowledging that you are proud enough of her to allow her into your family. Her mother must have been _horrified."_

"Yes, Kakashi, what would your father think?" an ancient old man said, his voice hoarse with age and disuse. Sakura decided to come to Kakashi's rescue.

"Actually I was a poor student at the time. I learned well enough but had no drive towards better application of technique—I voluntarily left Kakashi's training and sought a new teacher in Tsunade-shishou, the Godaime Hokage. I wasn't anything to be proud of when I was thirteen." There was a reign of silence over the table. Sakura decided not to educate her new relatives about the fact that one: age of consent in Konoha was fourteen, and two: sensei were not allowed to pursue romantic relationships with their students until their student had either studied with them for five years or was over the age of seventeen—whichever came first.

"But you are now," Kakashi said, taking her hand and smiling a little as he spoke.

* * *

**Lock**

When Sakura found out she was infertile, she was tempted to bury the information. She was tempted to lock it up tight where no one would see her failures. She was all of sixteen, and she knew that that day was not going to be the hardest in her life. Someday she would have to tell a guy that she could never have kids with him, that they'd have to adopt.

Not that adoption was hard in Konoha, it was actually fairly easy with the number of orphans generated by missions gone awry, wars, etc. But it still worried her, whether or not she would lose someone she loved for the simple fact that she couldn't have children.

When Kakashi was told he was infertile it didn't affect him at all really. There was no one he planned on sharing the information with, and so he felt no real need to make it a big secret that he could never have children of his own. It was because of an injury which had gotten infected, he'd been told when he woke from a several weeks' coma. Everything still worked, he was just going to shoot blanks the rest of his life. He had been perhaps twenty, twenty two. He didn't expect to ever get in a relationship, but he figured he'd tell them at least. Best not to get their hopes up.

When Sakura and Kakashi started dating, they each tried to tell the other about their condition. After a few botched starts, Kakashi managed to finally spit it out—he was embarrassed to tell his medic-girlfriend, especially because now that it came down to it he wouldn't have minded having a kid with her. If it came up, of course, he would never ask her to give up her career or anything. Sakura had stood in front of him, her mouth hanging open a little bit before she launched herself at him, her words blurring together as she told him that she likewise was unable to have kids.

It was certainly a strange bond to form a relationship with, but they were locked together by their strange fates and couldn't have been happier when years later they adopted a little boy who refused to call them anything but "Kura," and "Kashi,"—they couldn't and didn't even want to convince him to call them Mother and Father.

* * *

**Drink**

Contrary to popular belief, Tsunade didn't teach Sakura how to drink. It was Hatake Kakashi one night somewhere in Wind Country when he too found out that the Godaime hadn't corrupted the girl at an early age. Well, it was never too late to start—and the Copy Nin set about getting the sixteen year old properly drunk.

Also contrary to popular belief, Sakura was the one who took advantage of a more than tipsy Kakashi—just because she'd never felt called to drink didn't mean she hadn't researched all of the necessary anti-inebriation jutsu. It was all part of a grander plan to get the older man to loosen up around her and finally maybe admit that he liked her.

The widening of his eye as he realized just what she'd done was kept strictly between the two of them, however.

* * *

 

**Promise**

Kakashi walked his son to school every day. He'd pulled _severe_ strings to prevent his son from being tested for shinobi aptitude at three, and once again at five. Botan went to a civilian school and rather than starting on his karate at three, he had started on violin. The strings that Kakashi had pulled had been of the "The gods so help me, I will start an international incident _as well as_ a civil war _and_ take down your oh-so-secret-organization in a _highly_ public fashion," variety. People believed him, and that was why he walked his son to the civilian school every day.

The boy was told that his mother worked at the hospital. And he thought that for a _reason_ , and that was because his mother—the love of Kakashi's life, and the woman who had asked him to marry her—had pulled strings of her own. They'd decided long before Botan was born that they would raise him away from the ruthless lifestyle of a shinobi. They would homeschool him, of course, but he wouldn't be sent to the Academy—instead he would be registered as a reservist, and nothing more would be expected of him.

Kakashi had agreed to marry Sakura because she had asked. She had beaten him sparring eight years ago on his thirty seventh birthday. He'd asked what she wanted for a reward and she'd grinned in that terrifying way—he was a grown man, and grown men were such because they knew when they felt terror—before stealing a kiss. And then she'd asked him to marry her, and so he had. It was only as they planned their small wedding that they'd come to the decision that their children would be raised as civilians.

The pressure to procreate had been _immense_ after they'd announced the date to their friends and colleagues. Kakashi had been famous even before the terrible gift of the Sharingan, just as his father, mother, and grandparents had been famous in their own times. And then there was Sakura, who had been plucked out of the civilian kindergarten at five and put into the Academy based on her aptitude scores—and on top of that, her career as a kunoichi was legend. _Surely_ their children would be genius-level, high caliber shinobi from an early age. Sakura was nearly driven to having a nervous breakdown, because everyone assumed that now she would start pumping out little Hatake kids to fill the Academy with properly talented young shinobi.

He'd found her crying in his closet the night she lost it. She had been inconsolable for several agonizing minutes before managing to ask if that was what _he_ wanted her to do—give up her dreams, her career, everything she had shaped her identity around, all to be a stay-at-home-mother. Kakashi had managed to calm her down by telling her that he was already planning on retiring when they started a family—he would stay at home, not her, and with that assurance they fell asleep curled up in the closet.

Except Kakashi didn't sleep that night. He memorized a mental list of people he would pay a visit to if they ever had a baby—his children would never have to kill if he could help it. The pressure he had faced as a child had crushed him, he couldn't imagine inflicting that on his own child simply because other people thought it was a good idea, even a great one.

* * *

**Strength**

His girlfriend left her pet fish under Kakashi's care that winter—she was going to Suna to help train some of their medics during the part of the year she could stand. The little fighting fish came in a round bowl with a few plants in it and red pebbles an inch deep in the bottom. The fish itself was white with blue darts and splotches—a failed koi, in Kakashi's private estimation, as it could have passed for one if the blue had been orange—and a frayed, frilly tail and fins to match. The list of instructions which came with the fish indicated that its name was Hashirama, and he was to be fed twice a week and that he would be fine just anywhere.

Kakashi wasn't so sure, although for the first several weeks the fish seemed to be just fine. But then he noticed that the poor thing's fins seemed to be fraying, and that it was lethargic. If fish could be sad, Kakashi decided, little Hashirama was decidedly depressed. So Kakashi did something he would have never thought possible—he asked Gai how to care for it properly. Gai had a passion for fish which rivaled his excitement for springtime and green, and if Kakashi recalled properly his old friend had a few of these little fighting fish around his house.

He left Gai's with the knowledge that he should change Hashi's water more often, to feed him more often in smaller quantities, and that the plants shouldn't restrict his movement—oh, to keep the water as warm as possible, the fish was tropical. Kakashi's ears were ringing for days, but that just meant he could hear properly again when his tiny charge started to perk up a little. He found some white pebbles and washed them according to Gai's instructions and dropped them into the bowl, making a little white circle on the red stones already there.

They spent the rest of the winter like that, in the warm apartment waiting for Sakura to come back to them. Kakashi idly wondered if maybe he should bother Sakura about kids. After-all, he'd managed to keep her fish alive all winter, right?

* * *

**Unknown**

Sakura and Kakashi had been walking down around the cemetery, hand in hand, when Gai had flickered in front of Kakashi with a challenging gleam to his eyes. Kakashi's grip on her hand didn't waver, but he did sink into his slouch just a little deeper as though shrinking away from his excitable friend.

"My old friend, we meet again. Today is the anniversary of our legendary Dragon Fight, where we fought originally as boys in the Glorious Chinese Style—and as in years past, we shall fight it yet again!"

"Gai," Kakashi drew the man's name out, his voice bored but insistent, "I'm…" he spared a long glance at Sakura, more for Gai's benefit than hers and the Beautiful Green Beast picked up on the hint. With the most obvious subtle wink she had ever seen from the older shinobi, Gai made his exit speech.

"Ah, Kakashi it seems that you are fighting a battle far more perilous, with far more at stake, than a retelling of our most Youthful past together. I will fight you yet again on another day in June, as the sun is climbing to high noon—I wish you luck with your current mission!" and with that, the flamboyant and talented Jounin flickered away as quickly as he had come.

Sakura didn't even ask, she just smiled as Kakashi tugged on her hand to walk on. A blush showed on the tops of his cheeks and his ear, and Sakura could just barely detect his embarrassed smile. His generation had some of the dorkiest people running around. Him included.

It was several days later that she _did_ ask, once she figured Kakashi had lived it down in his own head. They were out for a walk once again, out to the forest so they could do some running up in the trees. It was sunny, but the morning air was still cool.

"So…I've never heard of anyone in Konoha who knew Chinese style, let alone the _glorious_ Chinese style. I've only seen it in movies from Kumo. I didn't even know it was real."

Kakashi scratched the bridge of his nose and pointedly looked away from her for a moment before squaring his shoulders and looking her in the eye.

"It is. It is real, it's just…" a huff of a laugh escaped him before he rushed on, "When Gai and I were teenagers—barely—he challenged me to a bout. Not sparring, a bout. This was a fight to unconsciousness. He was trying to cheer me up after the death of a friend, it was more than a year after I got the Sharingan."

"And?"

"Well, he was spouting off about this new taijutsu style he'd learned and that I had better have both eyes open otherwise I'd never see him coming. So I obliged him, and the eye just copied everything he did—I lost for most of the fight because the Sharingan can't copy moves into the future, but at a slight delay. Every year since then, we fight again just for old time's sake."

"Show me, teach me or whatever—I want to see this Glorious Chinese Style in person."

"Show you or teach you, they're different—People who've never fought against it get pretty beat up, people who want to learn it just want to get pummeled on purpose, and I'd rather not do that if you just want to see it—you learn too fast and punch too hard." Sakura laughed and tried to elbow him, a move which Kakashi deftly avoided.

"Well, no, get in touch with Gai and have your fight and I'll come root for you or something—if it's okay for me to watch, that is." Kakashi rubbed the back of his head and then slung his arm over her shoulders. She wrapped an arm around his hips in response and they adjusted their gaits to match one another.

"Yeah, I think that would be okay. Maybe Gai won't beat my face in too badly this year if you're there—and if he does, then you can fix it all up," her boyfriend finished with a smile.

* * *

**Candle**

His mother was lost and alone without their father, Sakumo could tell. They all were, to tell the truth, even Sakumo at forty nine was floundering a little. His father had been a rock for their family, as well as for many in the village and out of it—Hatake Kakashi had lived through and fought in more wars than was anyone's fair share, and had lost enough people that his wisdom was nearly always sound. No one had depended more on that advice and wisdom than Mother, however.

They all knew, from a row which had happened when they were all in their twenties—Sakumo had been almost thirty—that Father had perhaps tricked Mother into marrying him. She had been sixteen, the age of Sakumo's youngest brother at the time, and it was generally understood that that age was far too young to be making decisions like getting married. Father hadn't seen it like that, however, and had never truly clarified that view with Mother until then. They'd been married for more nearly thirty years, by then, and while Father showed his age—sixty—in the wrinkles starting in earnest on his face and cheeks, Mother had still been youthful and bright.

Somewhere in Sakumo's heart there was a tiny piece of him that was irked with how Father had won that argument—it had just been _so long ago_ that "couldn't Sakura forgive him?" and "what was the point of even fighting about it at this point?" It reminded him of why his wife Sumiko's parents had stayed together as long as they had— _for the kids_. Mother and Father were married, why change it so late in the game?

Sakumo didn't often revisit his thoughts on his parent's marriage, or how his father had encouraged him to have children earlier in life than he himself had. Sakumo just _didn't._

Besides, it was a moot point now. His father was dead, and he had his mother to look after. His poor mother who had always made her own choices and decisions and had the confidence that should anything go awry, she had Father to fall back on. Father was dead now, and so Mother had no one to catch her when she fell. All of the children she had with Father were a poor substitute for him, and her numerous grandchildren—and a few great-grandchildren, reminded her of her late husband's strong personality and appearance constantly.

Sakumo tried to take care of her as he could, and tried not to fret as his mother rapidly grew frail and brittle without the shade and nurturing of his father. Whatever the situation—more than fifty years ago—that had brought them together, both of them had grown to depend on one another. It pained him, but did not surprise him, then, that his mother Hatake Sakura died before her sixty eighth birthday. She only made it sixteen months, a candle sputtering at the end of a wick.

* * *

**Ice**

It should have settled like ice in his chest when he put together what he had done, but it didn't. They'd gone out to see the fireworks with Naruto, as a team once more. Their blonde teammate had quickly gone to get food and play some of the games when the beginning show was over, leaving Kakashi and Sakura alone on the hillside. The bugs rustled through the grasses, and the wind gently sifted through both of their hair. In the moonlight, the town was bleached almost white on the rooftops and smoke from the earlier fireworks floated thick and slow towards the Hokage mountain.

The night was hot and humid and Sakura had her red vest zipped halfway down to allow herself a little ventilation, and her boots were cast aside for the moment. Kakashi took off his own Jounin vest and toed off his own boots, his thin long-sleeve shirt clung to his back and the sleeves were pushed up to the elbows. He had laid back, flat on the ground, with his arms splayed out so his hands supported his head. It was nice out, sitting in the moonlight with a beautiful woman who liked him and was comfortable with him.

To Kakashi, Sakura was an adult. She was an adult who was capable of making her own decisions and of expressing her wants and desires and her opinion. However, he wasn't sure that anyone else knew this and respected it about her. And she was a _young_ adult. Kakashi well remembered how he had been pressured into ANBU shortly after Minato-sensei had been killed. He'd been a young adult as well, and had sorely needed someone to look out for him. He would look out for Sakura, and in such a way that no one would be able to push her around.

He was going to clip her wings, because the landscape of being a shinobi—especially such a smart and talented kunoichi such as Sakura—was a frigid one right now. Little birds like her shouldn't be exposed to the icy winds that he had been, and so that night Kakashi seduced her out on the grassy hill in the moonlight. He told her, and himself as well, that he loved her and would never lie to her again like he had in years past.

He would shelter her from the storm that was the Jounin exam or maybe the mission where she lost every teammate. Kakashi also knew that Sakura would have the same Achilles' heel as her teacher, how she was at risk of losing her nerve in the aftermath of tragedy. So he resolved for that to never happen to her, or at least if it did, to not live life as bereft of comfort as Tsunade-sama did. Yes, it was for a selfish reason. He wanted her eyes to always sparkle with innocence and sweetness, at least for as long as he would have to look into them. Kakashi didn't want to see the ice that was in his heart to ever rim her bright life.

* * *

**Farewells**

Team Seven had always been bizarre, Anko observed as she watched Kakashi-senpai say his goodbyes to his team. First came Naruto who was exuberantly listing just how much ramen Kakashi would owe him if he were late returning from the mission. Then there were Sai and Tenzou (Anko agreed with Kakashi, that man only had one name and it was _Tenzou_ ) who smiled in that awkward "I totally know/remember how to smile," why that had Naruto (and Kakashi) cringing a little as they bowed to one another. And then there was Sakura.

Recently the girl had been getting closer to Kakashi-senpai—something that Anko had shamelessly encouraged her towards and bullied Kakashi into taking it like a man—and today was certainly an _interesting_ development. Anko privately wondered how much she should sell this latest scene to Jiraiya-sama for—she had no problem ogling lovers and naked women and was also still allowed at half the bathhouses in Konoha, the man had to get his sources from _somewhere_.

The lanky, awkwardly tall Copy Nin took a hesitant step towards Sakura before crossing fully towards her and taking her in his arms, while the pink haired young woman reached up and peeled the man's mask downwards, hiding half of his face with her hand and pulling him downwards to hide the rest of his face with her own. Both shinobi breathed deeply into the kiss a few times, just barely coming up for oxygen and if Anko had been a lesser woman she would have looked away in warm embarrassment.

Instead she whooped and whistled, causing the rest of Team Seven to shift uncomfortably and get warm, embarrassed feelings on her behalf. The cheering seemed to egg Sakura on as she gave a little hop and wrapped her legs around the Copy Nin—a move that wouldn't have worked unless he'd caught her, which he did—and kept kissing him. Only when Anko started actually clapping did the two part, staring deeply into one another's eyes.

"Come back soon, okay?" Sakura's voice was so soft, it was as though she were trying to hide her words from a half dozen highly trained shinobi or something. Anko's smiling grew wider, hands akimbo on her hips, her stance accomplished if nothing else.

"I think I can do that," Kakashi said with a dazed smile as he put his mask back up on his face.

* * *

**Fire**

There was a fire inside of Kakashi that he often failed to let others see. It burned inside of him, white hot, constantly. It kept him going, burning his heels if he ever slowed, ever faltered. It was fueled by the deaths of those he had loved, those he had cared about, and grew only brighter and stronger when he cut more wood for it—other people added it, but he was the one who carefully carved out friendships with people, he was the one who let them get close.

The fire roared, hungry, desperate to consume them as it had so many others.

Kakashi didn't let it, of course, unless he absolutely had to. He knew that it wouldn't sputter and die, even if no wood was added for years on end.

Sakura found out about this fire herself when, after she nearly died on a mission, Kakashi threw himself into his work. He took missions as though sitting on the couch and stroking his fingers through her hair was painful to him. She wasn't one to be kicked around, she wasn't one to be ignored—and she had asked him why he was so intent on avoiding her. She had made sure to mention that the punishment of silence on his part was that she would leave him. If he refused to be around her, there was no point in seeing him romantically anymore, was there?

Kakashi had confessed that he had been terrified of losing her, and that he worried that he hadn't been doing enough to make the world they lived in safe, that he had almost lost her as a warning. He'd told her about the fire, and how he knew, just _knew_ that if his memories of her were ever added to it he would die in the flames rather than outrun their wrath.

* * *


	4. Chapter 4

**Red**

Kakashi's sharingan had finally gone blind shortly before his fortieth birthday. Sakura was the one to gently cut the nerves from it, so that he wasn't afflicted with migraines so intense that he was unable to work. It was strange to look into his eye and remember seeing the scarlet iris, the black tomoe, the changes the eye had gone through as Kakashi had obsessively improved the adopted eyeball to it's full potential. The eye looked fairly normal now, as black as Kakashi's natural one, even though Sakura knew it would soon start to gray over and fade to white—it was a dead eye, after all, living tissue rendered useless by trauma and age.

He had tripped around the village for a few days, unused to complete blindness on his left side—before he had moved with the confidence that came with two eyes, but now he only had one. Sakura had elected to stay by his side for the most part, slipping her arm through his left one. He allowed it because it was less embarrassing to have his old student latched onto his arm than it was to run into lightpoles or the edges of buildings. At least, that was what she surmised must be the reason.

What Sakura didn't know was that Kakashi was faking it. And he was faking it in the hopes of this exact thing happening.

* * *

**Formal**

Kakashi was Sakura's date to Ino's wedding. The flighty Yamanaka girl was marrying Mr. Serious—or Morino Ibiki as everyone else in the village called him. They'd met in the intelligence department, and while Yamanaka Inoichi lamented the fact that his daughter was marrying a man fifteen years her senior, he could find no fault with the man himself. But Ino had insisted that it was _totally normal_ for these things to happen and had bullied Sakura into backing her up. And then Sakura had bullied Kakash into backing _her_ up.

He had agreed, but only if she wore traditional formal civilian clothing—weddings were strictly civilian in his mind, and he wasn't about to show up wearing formal attire while she arrived in whatever she threw on for the day. Sakura had been in a bind, and had gone along with his bizarre request. The kimono she wore was stifling, leaving her no room to breathe and her skin felt itchy and hot—made worse by Kakashi's warm hand at her back.

She'd been rewarded at the end of the night, however, by Kakashi as he stole a kiss from her as they left the reception. He'd even taken his mask off and everything to do it, too.

* * *

**Forgotten**

If you had sat him down and forced him to watch _Hook_ , Sasuke would have scoffed at Peter Pan's memories of trying to return home. Unless, however, you had then taken him to look through Haruno Sakura's window as she packed her things in preparation of moving out. She was, you see, going to go live with her boyfriend.

Her boyfriend was a man fifteen years her senior, a man who was generally well-thought of and believed to be in possession of a fine head on his shoulders. The civilians tut-tutted, but civilians always did that. _Teaching children to kill?_ Tut-tut. _Stealing information for money?_ Tut-tut. _Former teacher having completely fun and completely consensual sex with a former student who was of legal age?_ Tut-tut.

Civilians did a lot of forgetting, too. Mostly forgetting who kept them safe for the most part.

But Sasuke would have been horrified that _Sakura_ had forgotten _him_.

Somehow in his mind, he would murmur, he had thought she would always be waiting for him. That she would grow old waiting for him, for dreams that would never come, for children that would never grow. He hadn't accounted for Sakura, and the fact that she lived not in a vacuum but a maelstrom. She'd found Kakashi, their former teacher, to cling to in the midst of it and she had hung onto him for dear life. Or so it seemed.

And she had so literally and completely forgotten Sasuke that she did not pack up his picture for her move. She didn't even really _see_ it on her final sweep around the room to see if she'd forgotten anything.

Sasuke found this all out, of course, in a cold bar in a forgotten country of forgotten importance. He was listening in on a conversation between two kunoichi from Fire who had trained with Sakura once upon a time. They were talking about the new Hatake baby, and wasn't Sakura-san just _so cute_ with the little baby girl in her arms? It didn't take a genius mind to fill in the rest.

He'd been forgotten. Utterly.

* * *

**Passing Notes**

_I love you_

All that was written on the tiny and crumpled-folded-smoothed-crumpled-folded note were three words. The simple and abused little note had been on her desk, in the exact center. Sakura's hands shook as the probable April Fool's joke jabbed a little at her ribs. Yet she still felt flattered. Even if it was a joke, at least it wasn't signed to give her false leads or hope—and it would have her looking out for anonymous affection with a careful eye.

She also wasn't too worried if it was a joke—they might play their prank on her, but her response would be to send them flying (toothless) into Ame or Suna.

You didn't joke with Haruno Sakura about love and live, and, knowing this, she turned the mistreated paper over to write a return note on it. If the sender was a ninja—and would have to be to have this sort of clearance or ability to avoid clearance—then they would know she'd at least opened their note.

 _You must be joking_.

_I can assure you that I am not._

The note was on a new piece of paper, crisply folded this time. The symbols were generic, showing no personal marking of them, no identifiable trademarks. This was turning out to be an elaborate joke!

Sakura carefully unfolded, read, and refolded the note throughout her day. It was a maddening experience, not knowing whether or not it was a fake or some real person with real feelings for her. Although she did not let on about her inner trials concerning the papered confession, Sakura did begin forming a mental list of who might have given it to her. Around midnight, after getting down with the last of her duties of rounds and paperwork, she also sat down at her desk and penned a response.

_Will you tell me who you are?_

_I will not give you my name, but I will tell you about myself, if you would do the same. Daffodils will be your answer if I can't answer any question._

The scrap of paper, nearly as tortured as the first, appeared on her desk several days later. The placement of it, cautious, beneath the side of the desk where her trashcan lurked was an obvious reference— _stop this now, or continue and face the consequences_. Sakura didn't have time to think about what she would say, she only had time to scribble one phrase before heading over to a meeting with the Hokage.

_Am I right in thinking that you know me and my schedule quite well?_

_Yes, I would think that you are right in that. Do you like having pink hair? I think it is beautiful._ The note looked as though it had been left hastily, not perfectly aligned with some line or theme of her desk.

And so it went.

The banter continued for months. In her mailbox, on her desk, in her backpack, in her mail, notes appeared and awaited answers. Sakura found that those notes asked nothing which she felt needed to be hidden—but her own questions didn't seem to be as tactful. Often she got the simple answer of _daffodils_ along with some new question.

Rarely did she get them during times when she would either have to account for their presence or be unable to read them at her leisure. Her responses were always left in one of a few nooks in her desk that notes had appeared in before. Sakura took to keeping the original notes, love letters sometimes, and writing her own ones on her own paper.

Once during a meeting with Kakashi, now Hokage, and his staff she had nearly been caught reading one of the more poignant semi-letters. Kakashi had asked in his usual disinterested tone when the Sakura he had taught had started filling in for the Sakura that was the director of the hospital. She might have flushed deeply, but replied in her sweetest voice that in the center of every mature woman there was another woman who wouldn't let go of being in love—even briefly.

_I know we don't revisit this often, but I need you to know that I still love you. It's hard to know that, I get it. The anonymous truth is sometimes too abstract to even consider. But I cannot go through the rest of my life without you knowing this._

The words were alarming to Sakura, who immediately wrote a response.

_You sound as though I will stop replying to your notes and cut you out of my life._

There was no reply for three days, and on the third day Sakura wrote a note at home to leave on her desk at work. It said, verbatim, what her admirer had said about the anonymous truth.

It was a semi-miracle that she found her admirer's note first before she deposited hers.

_One day, I will slip-up with this. On that day, I will find out if abstract made real will affect this—will affect you, me, everyone around us. Because I am human I cannot go my entire life without making mistakes, and this has become so elaborate that I fear every day that you shall catch me as I leave the newest reply. And then you will kill me or some other equally horrific thing._

Sakura quietly destroyed, in a fashion that Kakashi had taught her years before, the slightly mean note she'd written.

When, another few months later, Sakura finally wrote in her reply the three words she'd first received in April, there was a dry-spell of replies yet again. Dry-spells seemed only to happen when she surprised her correspondent, which Sakura found perfectly reasonable. It wasn't as though, with this relationship, one could simply lay a kiss upon a forehead or a hand upon another.

_You aren't joking, are you? I don't want to believe that you would be that cruel to me or any other man._

Sakura grinned when she didn't get a snarky reply from her loving pen-pal.

_Well, now I know which half of the population to rule out._

The meeting was running long, and Sakura was antsy to get back to her desk in the hospital. It was usually during—she had come to believe—the long meetings with Kakashi and the rest of his staff that her admirer left her letters and notes.

She could control herself, however, because the meeting was a serious one determining the establishments of new bloodline families in Konoha. It was a move which according to Kakashi, as well as Hyuuga Neji, might spark tension between Konohagakure and other hidden villages. Sakura was there to provide insight on medical possibilities of such bloodlines, and as a sounding board for any names which were generated from the meeting.

Boring. As. Hell.

Even Kakashi was doodling, she could see as he sat far from her across the table.

"Kakashi-sama—" Neji continued on with his drone, only to be interrupted.

"Kakashi." The correction was quick and decisive.

"Kakashi-sama," the younger man restarted without pause, "your lightning summons and strikes were taught to you by your father—and you were only able to pass them on to those who have incredible chakra levels are their disposal, correct?" Who would have known that Neji would make such a good bureaucrat, papers, graphs, personal biographies and all.

Sakura—and everyone else in the room—immediately knew where Neji was going with this. The people in the room watched Kakashi anxiously as his hand, the one not attached to the elbow supporting his chin, rose and roughly pulled through his wild mane of hair.

"Daffodils."

Sakura had long expected one of her male compatriots to slip-up. She expected the slight widening of the eyes (eye) and microsecond pause after said slip-up—as her correspondent had said he would—but she had never really considered it to be Kakashi. Kakashi seemed far too well put together, compartmentalized, and emotionally ruined by grief to ever fall in love. Did he have the capability to correspond with someone anonymously for more than eight months when he worked in the same office as they?

Of course he did—Sakura had just never considered him, really. He, for as long as she'd known him, kept his personal life (what little there was) personal and his professional life professional. It wasn't beyond comprehension that top-ranked ninja fell in love, it had just always seemed that Kakashi didn't have that in his destiny.

The meeting had progressed as usual, and Kakashi had done admirably as he finished conducting it. It was why he was Hokage in the first place, because he could hold back one side long enough for another to complete its tasks.

Sakura, however, had been distracted for the rest of the meeting—she had been quickly putting to paper every word that passed through her mind and as Kakashi called the meeting to its end she folded the paper quickly into the usual shape her correspondent—Kakashi—folded important confessions.

She didn't speak a word to him, there were too many people around, but she did give him a smile as she pressed the note into his steady hands. She couldn't, he couldn't, afford to freak out about this now.

 _I don't think I could find a better man to be in love with._ It's still love…she thought. It's still love when you don't see a person for months, so it's love when you see the person for the first time. He had always seemed so centered, though—although as a medic Sakura knew that he needed someone to balance his life out properly, and that had always worried her about him as she watched him go through life—and his focus was still impeccable, despite everything.

He also had slipped up at the strangest times. Not that she worried over-much about that, she had finally gotten to attach a face to the man she was in love with—well, sort of. Not sort of in love with—but she still didn't know what Kakashi actually looked like.

She felt like a fool, he had seen every ploy of hers throughout the past few months. Kakashi knew when she'd asked him what he looked like that she was fishing for identifying marks and features…and he also knew that she knew of none that wouldn't immediately give him away. It was staring her right in the face…

She must **look** like a fool.

_Please don't let this be some joke because you're bored, please don't give up fighting for this. You fought so hard, you've told me, to even pick up the brush to write me those three words in the first place._

She had wanted so long for her pen-pal, whoever he was, to slip up right in front of her. She had wanted him to be a good enough ninja to not show everyone else that he'd messed up. She wanted him, now Kakashi, to be suddenly and completely hers-and have no one in the room know it at the time.

_But now I don't know what you want, because when I didn't know which face you were but who you were, and now I know which face you are and I don't know if I am to rely on who you are or who you might be…Because I know who you are, but not who you might be or become._

_What is it that you want?_

Not an hour later an aid informed her that the Hokage had requested a personal meeting with her. Sakura naturally asked why, testing the waters of this new development—of course Kakashi wouldn't put off dealing with something of this magnitude, it was against all sense of duty instilled in ninja who lived to his age—and Sakura received an answer which was so heartbreakingly reminiscent to her letters that she had to agree immediately. The Hokage wanted to speak with her for reasons concerning his own health.

Who better to speak to about the health of the reigning Hokage than the top med-nin of the village?

Who better to doctor, with comfort, an aching heart than one's love?

After a sharp rap of the aid upon the door to his main office, Sakura was left alone until there was a softly called, " _enter_ ," from within. Kakashi sat cross legged upon his desk, his thumb paused on the page of a book—a scrapbook of some sort.

Sakura entered the room and closed the door with a click—but after that didn't know how to stand. She'd never managed to be in love, really truly in love, before and so she didn't know how one stood in the room with one's significant other—and obviously she shouldn't stand at attention since…well, Kakashi's current seating arrangement precluded formality.

Kakashi, as she'd debated with herself, had turned the pages of his book towards the end of it. It was a scrapbook, filled with…Scraps. She didn't quite know what to make of that strange behavior…That was when Sakura's eyes followed Kakashi's other hand toward the desk surface, where he picked up what she recognized to be her newest letter to him. With utmost care the letter was pressed flat on the open page before him, and Kakashi gingerly secured it there.

The room was silent.

Sakura was about to draw breath to speak when Kakashi looked up at her. She was pinned by his gaze.

"This book, Sakura-chan, is full of professed love for me," he said softly, the mask bobbing to the words his lips formed, "but on the very first page, my own labored printing stares up at me every time I open it. I daily remind myself that what I was doing could be construed as one of the utmost wrongs—and that with a word this could easily be all I have to treasure." At each word that fell from him, and from, Sakura surmised, his heart, she felt her will to speak dry up in order to preserve the moment.

"However, you seem to have finally asked me something I have not found the answer for yet. What is it that I want? I might ask you the same question—although I fear the response to that, just as much as I fear pulling my mask down for you." _Look beneath the underneath_ Sakura reminded herself—he was giving her the answer right there if she could but find it..

"You want…" she paused for a moment to think, trying to avoid breaking eye-contact with him, trying to be brave enough to say for him that which he evidently wasn't brave enough to say himself... "You want…No, it's something I want…No…" his expression didn't change one iota, " _We_ both want to wake up in someone's arms from whom we have no secrets. Your mask represents your secrets, the things that have only ever gone on in your mind and what you've never told anyone. The notes, all these months, were your mask—because you don't know how to live without one, but you…must keep those secrets as they are." She ran out of thoughts to spill into the space between them, and another occurred to her just as Kakashi took a breath to agree or disagree.

"You can't carry on a relationship with someone who is content to see your face and to live with it when you wear your mask. You needed someone—me—to wear a mask and to protect it just as fiercely as you do your own. The most…fundamental part of who you are is the ability to bear those secrets. It was still a secret that you loved me—but it was bearable now that…" Sakura ran completely out of steam then…She couldn't look further, wasn't able to.

Kakashi filled in for her.

"It has been bearable because I knew my regard was well placed. That when I slipped up, as I knew I would eventually, you had already tested me to the brink of what I could share with you—I let you underneath my mask, so to speak." His hand rose, then, with fingertips touching—just barely—the edge of the cloth covering his face. His eye was steady.

But in a flash, Sakura was there, stopping any more downward progress. Kakashi still sat crosslegged on the desk, with Sakura leaning slightly over it—her hand firmly clenching his wrist.

"If I've been underneath it all this time, there is no need to remove it now. There will be plenty of times later when you can, but right now I don't need that as confirmation from you."

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Finding the Hatakes**

If one required advanced medical attention for something that could wait, one always wanted the Godaime Hokage, Tsunade of the Leaf. Long term debilitating ills or things requiring surgery were her specialties in curing.

If one required ultimate loyalty, unswerving devotion—the point of idiocy—and determination, one always wanted the Rokudaime Hokage, Uzumaki Naruto. Missions which required courage and an abject disregard for personal safety were his where his specialty for completing missions came in handy.

If one, however, required both, one had to search far and wide for aid. Because Tsunade lived with the Toad Sage deep within the forests surrounding the village of the Leaf, and Naruto lived in the very center of Konoha acknowledged by all as the most successful ninja to have ever come from the town. They were hard to get to if one needed both, because they were so far distant from one another.

One had to search because if one required ultimate devotion to duty and highly advanced medical skills—both for long-term things and for injuries requiring immediate attention—one had to find the Hatakes. They travelled slowly, but were extremely difficult to track. They had two children of their own and a fluctuating number of students travelling with them, but their camp sites left no trace and they rarely if ever went into established towns.

More often than not, a stream of single or doubled shinobi would appear in a town, each with random orders for the local store. Each would order, pay, and pick up their purchases—and leave. Never, however, did a silver haired man in his forties or a pink haired woman in her late twenties appear. The Hatakes were ghosts within the borders of Fire.

They had quietly left Konoha one night, with special dispensation from the Godaime, and never returned to the Leaf. Hatake Sakura—as of that night no longer Haruno—was seventeen and full of "bratspawn" as Tsunade termed it with affection which bordered on furious. The elders were making Hatake Kakashi leave the village, his name in disgrace. It was all well and good for anyone to date anyone in Konoha, but there were rules about when kunoichi were granted the right to have families, and the law stated that the father would be banned from the city while the mother was free to choose—to stay or follow him. Sakura chose to follow Kakashi rather than face single parenthood away from the man she loved.

The elders had felt keenly the loss of two of their best shinobi, and it had been decided that the Hatakes would become freelance instructors for Konoha. It became a student's own choice to study under the disgraced shinobi. It became a student's own choice to try to _find_ them and then pass their tests.

Although no evidence can be found to back up the statement, it is said that both of them still wear the symbol of the leaf on their foreheads and that their children (two boys with spiky silver hair) perform Academy-style taijutsu kata in time with the few (sometimes many) students who manage to find the Hatakes.

> * * *
> 
>  

Hatake Sakura was named after her great-great-grandmother Sakura, a great ninja and the woman who every Hatake credits with the freedom of the clan. Freedom from the shinobi wars, from the clan strife, from the mission ranking systems and bureaucracy of the sprawling city of Konoha proper. The Hatakes are free to wander because Sakura chose to follow her husband when he was thrown out of the city by a vengeful Hokage—the sixth Hokage—he'd married the man's sister, after all, and he'd done it all very hush-hush.

According to Grandpa, it was only a month after he'd left that Sakura (the original one) had found she was carrying his child. It was her yearning desire to find him, to be with him, that had freed the clan which she would become the mother of. She'd slipped away into the forests and spent five months looking for Kakashi, getting slower and slower as her pregnancy progressed. She found him far from Konoha teaching five youngsters how to manipulate chakra, deep within the eastern part of the forests.

To be named after such a woman was a blessing and a curse—no kunoichi could hope to hold a candle to the legendary Sakura of the Forests, but it was a damned good incentive to try. Although Sakura was very glad that the clan had no rules or qualms about who married who, she looked forward to _not_ emulating the original Sakura's behavior.

* * *

 

**Strangers When We Meet**

He always got up before she did. It didn't matter if he was sick, which was rarely, or if he had returned from a mission late in the night, or if they'd kept one another up for hours, he was always awake before she was. He was usually out of bed before she even realized the body next to her had awoken. Various things happened after he got up—sometimes he would shower, other mornings he did flexibility stretches, once in a while he would just get dressed and lay back down next to her, staring at the ceiling.

It was these mornings, these few mornings, she was glad that her parents had sheltered her so well. She hadn't known who he was until she'd met him, and even then had known nothing of his reputation until weeks into training with him. It was because of this that she had formed her initial opinions of him as a person rather than an idol. The mornings where he only got dressed made her realize that while she knew him now, they had been strangers for much of their acquaintance, even early into their relationship.

He was a peaceful man who understood his place in the world, and she sometimes resented him for it. She felt so lost, so often. Part of her was glad because their early interactions had forced her to answer these questions on her own, rather than relying on him as her crutch. But that was only a part. The other part continued to puzzle, wonder what life would have been like if she had met him already knowing him.

She knew what it would be like, however, because she knew what it was like when people met her already knowing her. A quick smile, a nervous laugh, and then an attempt to flee the scene. Looking at his lanky body laid out next to hers, attired in all of his gear—he must be leaving on a mission today—she knew that her relationship with him wouldn't have ever happened. First impressions were hard to change, she knew that better than most. It's why she got up once he had, guilty at seeming to be lazy.

She usually started breakfast after he left the bed. They always had the same thing for breakfast, rolled omelets, rice, and a spot of soup. On the mornings where he went to shower she would sit at the kitchen table and clean her nails before starting breakfast. The mornings when he stretched she wrapped herself in whatever was handy before shuffling to the kitchen. When he lay back down beside her in bed she would curl up to his side and close her eyes, breathing him in.

His eyes would remain on the ceiling, but a hand would sweep through her hair and across her back. Neither her shiver nor goose bumps would spark a comment, but his fingertips would trace deliberate patterns into her shoulder blades, and if she looked at his face she usually saw a serene set to his mouth. After many years and many struggles, they were together, and he was glad for it.

She was glad for it as well.

* * *

**Wrappings**

There is nothing sensual, to Kakashi, about helping Sakura wind wrappings around her ankles and one of her upper thighs. To another man, perhaps, one who had not lost so much, this might have been a time for last-minute affections and affirmations, but not Kakashi. When they help one another prep to leave the compound, they are strictly professional. There can be nothing in his touch which could cause her to lose focus later on when she's unwrapping and wrapping these bandages herself on her mission. Losing focus on missions, especially these ones being run against Danzou's tyranny of the countryside in Fire, can easily prove fatal. Both Kakashi and Sakura—to Kakashi's great dismay—knew this fact far too intimately now.

When she gets home to him and the _snug_ hammock they've elected to share, he will sit her on the hanging contraption and stand in front of her and help her out of her mission gear. He will be glad she's returned to him alive, but for now he will absolutely not allow himself to indirectly cause her death. Save for the few comrades—less than a hundred—who escaped the village and Naruto, she is all he has left.

The first night they shared a hammock was a necessity for safety. Sakura was in hysterics, which everyone in the group thought to be perfectly rational considering only a day ago the girl had stumbled upon the murdered forms of the Godaime Hokage and the Hokage's first assistant Shizune. Because of her hysterics only Kakashi had been able to get her in control, and it was only with a reluctantly delivered nap-tap did he have the time to get someone to help him set up a hammock. He was the one who decided that Sakura was in no condition to sleep without supervision, and he held his former student to himself carefully as he sat into the hanging bed. When she awoke she cried silently into his jacket for most of the night.

There was nothing sensual about it.

The second time they shared a hammock was when Sakura gave up her own so that Temari, visiting the camp secretly to give them news from Gaara, could sleep unmolested by a certain shadow-master. She had caught Kakashi as he was getting back from a spar with a faceless Jounin who he knew but she did not. He was sure to be the only male in the entire group who wouldn't be completely repulsed by the thought of sharing a hammock on one of the hot, humid Fire Country summer nights. He didn't disappoint her. They talked for half the night, in mission-level whispers so as not to wake their fellow shinobi. At the false dawn, when the sky inexplicably became light before the temperatures plunged, they drifted off to sleep.

There was…something a little sensual about it. They had, after all, spent the night in conspiratorial closeness, breathing one another's breath, being swaddled close to one another by the hammock.

The third time they shared a hammock was six months later when they had completed a successful raid, a huge raid, of a poorly inventoried warehouse. Danzou was much more concerned with military stockpiles, and he unfortunately paid little attention to pre-military items. He looked for uniforms, not for cloth. He looked for shuriken and kunai, not kitchen knives or civilian weapons. He looked for things a shinobi could pick up and use as they had been trained—not for things a shinobi on the run might _use_ once the shinies ran out. He also had lost the number-pushers of the village, the Yamanaka, the Aburame, the Nara, and most importantly the Sarutobi. No one who was left in Konoha had the patience or the patriotism to number-crunch, to form lists, to review those lists, or anything.

There had been dancing in the encampment when those on the mission had returned. Precious sake, the last gift of the Godaime many said, was poured out. The blood of many of them was warmed, and dancing broke out, swarming up into even the trees. Kakashi and Sakura had taken a bottle, having led the mission, and climbed one of the higher trees to sit and drink. His mask was down, her gloves were off, the moon was out, and they had sake to share. Each of them reminisced until the sake was gone. They were each a little wobbly a little later as they hopped down toward the earth, but they were steadied by one another, connected by clasped hands. Very few of their comrades were sober enough to catch the soft kiss the Copy Nin pressed to the pink haired teen's mouth. Even fewer of those would ever admit it after seeing her completely deck the group's Rokudaime, Naruto, the next morning for asking why the two of them had slept together. His wording had been, to be entirely truthful, poor: he had only asked why they shared a sleeping space, not even thinking of the usual connotations.

That had been the best night of Sakura's recently tragic life. She wasn't dysfunctional as a woman, she had found a man attracted by her strength, by her personality. And he had held her in his arms with affection, telling her that what he felt wasn't the sake but rather a feeling he had struggled with for months. They spent half the night stealing innocent kisses from one another between sentences.

It would remain, for the rest of her life, the most sensual experience she could think of.

* * *

**What He Never Expected**

Kakashi never expected to have daughters. Two wonderful little daughters, each with mischievous dark eyes and each with spiky silver hair, both of whom doted upon their tiny younger brother. Kakashi had definitely expected to have a son, if he ever had kids. But he'd never expected to have only _one_ son if he had multiple children—his whole family consisted of father-to-son arrangements, there hadn't been a Hatake girl for generations. And the son that Kakashi had always envisioned was a boy who was a carbon copy of Kakashi himself—not…not a carbon copy of the boy's mother.

Kakashi's son had wavy pink hair and eyes of the softest green, just like Kakashi's wife Sakura had. Oh, all of the girls in his family thought it was just wonderful, and they treated him like a dress-up doll almost from his very earliest infancy. Kakashi could only look on in horror as the girls would braid the boy's hair and give him pink painted shuriken.

His son was the surprise baby—born five years after the middle girl—the baby Kakashi had given up on years before. He had his two daughters who were well on their way to being lethal by ages seven and five respectively, and he would have to be content with that. Before the time his son had been born, Kakashi had resigned himself to the role his infant son took on later—the hair braiding test subject, the 'hero-shinobi-rescues-the-daimyo's-daughter' games, and all-purpose entertainment tool. The girls were thrilled when they were informed that Mommy and Daddy were having another baby.

Fast forward fifteen years after Kakashi's son's birth, and Kakashi meets another thing he never thought he would ever meet: future sons-in-law. At first it hadn't hit him, that one day one of the girls would come home with a boy and the boy would want to take Kakashi's daughter away. Luckily Kakashi wasn't alone this second time, because his son was also just as traumatized by the idea. The two of them were no longer the most important men in the girls' lives, and they'd just have to deal with it. Because the girls were planning a double wedding, with their mother as mastermind. Kakashi seriously considered moving to the Jounin HQ for a time, just to escape the giggling—but he couldn't because he'd sworn to never abandon a comrade. In this case his comrade was his one and only pink haired son. So Kakashi settled for the Hokage mountain, nestled into the hair of the Sandaime, with his son at his side. While the Yondaime's ear was particularly suited for spending an afternoon reading, the Sandaime's hair was highly conducive for emergency camping maneuvers by the two Hatake men.

It wasn't as though they could go home after escaping for the day—they lived with the three culprits of their misery, and with majority rules in effect during wedding planning (as Kakashi explained to his son), they would be the ones ousted anyway. It was a good a time as any for some extra bonding between the two shinobi, what with them being related and everything.

Although one would never be able to tell by looking at them—one with silver hair, the other with pink, one with a coal-black eye and the other with fierce green ones. But, then again, Kakashi never expected he'd have daughters, how could he have predicted a pink haired son?

* * *

**The Logical Choice**

"Kakashi-sensei?"

There was no answer from him, he was almost napping up in this tree she'd found him in. Shinobi rarely fell out of trees, so she didn't bother trying not to startle him.

"I think we should get married." His coal black eye cracked open a little at that, seeking out her face.

"We're not even dating—we don't even flirt, there's no chemistry, it'd be like being married to work."

"And that's exactly why we should. There will be someone strong and steady to come home to, not some emotional, hormonal wreck. And then we'd also get to sex each other up—and face it, your kids would be adorable, my kids would be adorable, therefore _our_ kids could take over the fucking world."

"Does this have something to do with your biological clock? I'd really rather not get into something like this just so you can be a parent," he settled back to napping, or at least giving the pretense of it.

"No, no, nothing like that. But I've got trust issues since…since ever, and you're pretty trustworthy. The only way you'd leave me—and our badass kids—is if I fed you tempura or if you died on a mission. And the same for me, except I love tempura and I hope you know the sacrifices I'm prepared to make for you."

"Such a heart-warming sentiment, you have for me, Sakura-chan, while you're trying to propose," he mumbled.

"Shut up, Kakashi-sensei."

"What do I get out of this arrangement, then? It seems it benefits you quite heavily," his words were said with a heaving sigh as he sat up properly and looked at her as though he was treating this as seriously as she was.

"You get your own personal medic available mostly all the time, you'll have someone to look after Pakkun's little ones while you're away on missions, someone to debate Icha Icha with, I'm one of the only woman in the village who can empathize with your obsession with the cenotaph, and most importantly I won't make you talk about your past because you've never made me talk about mine."

"Hmm…one of us probably has to retire from field-duty if that children thing is really going to work out."

"We'll figure out which one of us when there are kids, until then there's no point. Is that you agreeing in the most infuriatingly round-about way possible, Kakashi-sensei?"

"I suppose it would be that, yes. When would you like to get married, Sakura-chan?


End file.
